


Life is in the Moving On

by Bluefall



Category: DCU (Birds of Prey)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-09-01
Updated: 2007-09-01
Packaged: 2019-06-23 03:39:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15597477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bluefall/pseuds/Bluefall
Summary: Somewhere between the Crisis and OYL, Helena and Babs seem to have entirely worked out their shit. The thing is, these two have alotof shit to work out; progress sometimes comes in starts and fits and requires the intervention of Dinah or attacking ninjas.





	Life is in the Moving On

Dinah was fond of the Aerie One for many reasons; one of the foremost among those was the fact that Barbara would often leave Dalten and run missions from the air when they traveled far off the beaten track. And while that did mean that she ended up on the ground with the rest of them (and thus disturbingly within reach of the crazy green ninjas with pointy knives) when Zinda popped the rear hatch and covered her and Helena's retreat, it also meant that there was someone with two good hands and plenty of first aid training right there when they took off.

And considering the nasty gash that pulsed blood all over Huntress' rent midriff as they stumbled through the door, and Dinah's obviously broken left fingers, and the fact that the nearest hospital of any real quality (and just as important, with any real discretion) was easily a two hour flight away, well. Immediate first aid was something she rather appreciated.

"Alright. Lay her down here," was Barbara's first sharp command as she set up the medical kit, pulling a pair of latex gloves on while Dinah managed to maneuver Helena into the reclined seat and peel off her mask. Once she was settled in, Barbara passed the kit over her stomach to Dinah. "I hope these scissors are as good as advertised."

Helena raised her head and looked down with pained consternation as Barbara took the scissors in question to her costume, shearing easily through the light armor and tossing the pieces aside. "Hey! The hell... you think you're doing?" she gritted.

"This needs stitches, _now_. If you're worried about the uniform, don't. I'll have two more made to replace it. You needed an upgrade to hybrid kevlar anyway, as evidenced by this _gaping stomach wound_ you managed to get _through your armor_."

"Stitches?" managed Helena incredulously.

"I wouldn't put it past her," Dinah advised as she scrambled in the kit for medical tape. "You know she sews all those little Bat-clan dolls she's got lying around the tower herself, right?"

"Hrr." Helena flopped her head back down against the reclined chair, biting words out painfully. "Well. If Babs can... sew, she can sew... with the best. Stitch me up, sister."

"I'm afraid I don't have anything on hand that will put you under," Barbara said, not really seeming to hear them as she peeled Helena's costume away from the wound. "You'll have to make do with the local anesthetic. Dinah, could you pass --"

The blonde handed the wipes across the chair with her good hand and Barbara quickly stripped them out of their paper packaging. "Thanks. This should also slow down the blood a little, make it easier to see what I'm doing --" Helena hissed involuntarily as the chemicals hit the ragged edge of her wound. "-- Sorry. Dinah, are you okay to help me here?"

Biting off the end of the roll she was using to tape her broken pinky, Dinah took a deep breath and willed the pain to the back of her mind. "S'long as you only need one hand."

"If you're sure. And there should be a chemical ice pack in the bottom of the kit."

"Yeah, I see it," Dinah said, pulling the pack out and snapping the corner before cradling it in her damaged fingers. "Here, a couple more towels... is that slowing down at all? I can't tell."

"I'm starting to... _ehgh_... not feel it so much," gritted Helena, despite hissing with every touch as Barbara carefully picked bits of gravel out of her wound. "But I... _ntk_... gotta say I'm a little... _sst._.. dizzy."

"Just stay with me, Hel," said Barbara reassuringly. "We're short on blood at the moment, but we'll get you some liquid as soon as I'm sure it'll stay in."

Dinah finally located the suture thread, a package full of paper-wrapped coils where she'd been looking for a spool. "Short on -- You keep _blood_ on the Aerie One? What am I even asking? Of course you do." She reached over to help wipe the cut clean as Barbara pulled the thread out of its packaging. "Wow, those look nasty."

Up until that moment, Barbara had still been Babs -- a careful professional calm turning her urgency into a brisk precision, but still clearly worried, fear and empathy warring for space behind her eyes. But the moment Dinah brushed clean the two white knots of skin that were clearly bullet scars, blank, mechanical Oracle snapped down across her best friend's face like a light going out.

"Eh, Babs'll fix it up just... fine," Helena murmured, eyes locked tight against the pain.

"She's talking about the Joker's Christmas present, actually," said Oracle as she pushed the needle through Helena's skin. "Though you're right about tonight's souvenir. It's not as deep as I thought, it should heal pretty cleanly."

"The Joker's --" Dinah bit back a horrified gasp. "These both happened at the same time?"

"There were three, actually," said Oracle tonelessly, as she made another couple tight, neat stitches.

Helena gave a snort of bitter laughter and immediately hissed as her stomach jumped with the movement. "The last one's... higher up. Still... under... _Christ._.. still under the costume."

"Helena, don't talk," admonished Barbara gently, and for a moment she was Babs again, eyes soft as she glanced up at Helena's face. But her voice was flat and distracted when she looked back down and added, "Dinah, would you open another pack of thread?"

Helena reached out and grabbed Barbara's wrist, suddenly, with enough strength to make the redhead pause. "Wasn't your _fault,_ " hissed Helena, angry behind the pain. "I chose Pettit. Made a bad call."

Dinah sat there, holding out the open package of surgical thread and watching her two closest friends try to outstare each other, and it finally really hit her that all this time, all the labored past between Oracle and the Huntress actually _hadn't_ been all about Nightwing after all.

Barbara finally shook off Helena's hand and took the thread, but between every stitch she glanced up at Helena's face as she talked. "We left you alone out there. All those months, we made you carry an entire corner of the city by yourself. We locked you out of our territory and our resources and treated you like a _bad_ guy, like Penguin or Croc. It was _wrong_. If we hadn't cut you off, you'd never have... you would have had _backup_."

Helena did the little snort again and managed to keep back the accompanying hiss, though Dinah could see her eyes water. " _Please_ don't... make me laugh, Babs. You really... apologizing to _me_ for No Man's Land? I'm... the one who... _stormed_ your _tower_... ha."

"That doesn't matter anymore, Helena," said Babs, quietly, but she stopped looking up at Helena's face, eyes intent on the thread between her fingers.

"Shut _up_. God, this is... you tried to... _help_ me. Kind of dumb... _very_ dumb about it, but you were... genuine good intentions. And I got... you had to... almost _die_ for me to pull my head out of my ass. And you... just took me back. But all this time... I never... said how sorry I am. God, I'm so sorry, Babs."

Dinah wordlessly passed Barbara the next open package, and Barbara took it automatically, barely even conscious of her presence. "You fought for the city," she said fiercely, not looking up from her work. "You switched sides and helped us when you and Pettit raided the Clocktower. You protected hundreds of civilians in your territory every night. You took three bullets to the gut from the Joker and saved eighty innocent men, women and children with no help and no hope of support. None of the rest of it matters."

"Not even Batgirl?" coughed Helena.

Barbara's hands stopped dead.

 

 

Helena lay there for a moment, breathing shallow and labored and her eyes screwed shut. "You're why he wanted me.... When he told me to... protect the tower. 'Don't be seen' he said. I... didn't understand, but now... He... didn't want you to see me... wearing your uniform."

It wasn't until Barbara's hands finally started moving again, the last two achingly slow stitches and a careful, deliberate knot, that Dinah realized she'd been holding her breath.

"He said that to you?" Barbara said, with a voice that couldn't quite decide if it wanted to be hurt or deathly dangerous.

"What happened, Babs?" Helena asked, a pained, sad whisper as she laid her head back. "I remember the papers... said it was because of your dad... What was it really.... Like me? Too stupid to... get out of the way.... Or a takedown gone bad?"

Barbara's knuckles were white even through the bloody latex. "No. It was exactly what the papers said. It was... Batgirl _retired_ a couple months before that. I thought there were better ways to spend my energy in a world full of metas." She gave a sharp, bitter laugh. "Joker came for my dad, just to mess with Batman. It wasn't even a _fight_. I just opened the door and _bam_. That was that."

Helena shifted, but whatever her expression was, Dinah didn't catch it. In fact, the front of the plane could have exploded and she wouldn't have caught it, because _nothing in the world_ at this moment could make her look away from Babs. She hadn't known -- Barbara never talked about it and Dinah sure wasn't going to be the one to ask -- but she'd always assumed, like Helena had, that it must have been in costume, that that bright, talented crimefighting champion had gone down in heroic battle. Joker shooting the Batgirl -- how could that have been an _accident_?

And if it had, if it _had_ , how had Barbara ever found the strength to even get out of bed again?

"Yeah," said Helena, after a long, ugly pause, her tone thick with misery and self-loathing. "I should never have... put that costume on."

"No, you were right," Barbara said softly, her shoulders loosening with obvious effort, an ease belied by the tension in her eyes as she spoke. "The No Man's Land was... Gotham needed a Bat. And you wore it well, whatever Batman... whatever any of us said. The tagging, the north side, the riots, that Christmas... none of us could have done any better. You did the legacy honor."

Helena shook her head, angry and dismissive. "I fucked up, Babs. I --"

"Seriously, Helena, _shut up_ ," Barbara cut in sharply. "I just put twenty-six stitches in your gut, you need to lie still, breathe shallow and rest. No Man's Land was a long time ago. We didn't know each other then. We do now, and there isn't another woman I'd rather call my capo. That's all that matters, _got_ it? Now, _I'm_ going to go make sure Zinda wasn't lying when she said she wasn't hurt, and _you_ are going to be sleeping when I get back."

And with that, she peeled the gloves off with a snap, dropped them in the biohazard can, and wheeled toward the front of the plane with all the firm inevitability of Batman's best vanishing act. They watched her go wordlessly.

After a moment, Dinah limped over to the cooler and pulled out a water bottle for Helena. "Small sips," she warned as she handed it over. "If you can handle that, I've got some painkillers and iron tabs."

Helena ratcheted the chair and pulled herself up about forty-five degrees with a horrible pained curse that was half growl, half whimper, before shakily unscrewing the plastic cap. "Painkillers... would be heaven. How's your hand?"

"Can't feel a thing. Probably means I should let go of the cold pack, huh?" She dropped it back into the med kit. "I don't know if I can wrap my ankle right with one hand," she said, giving her boot a speculative stare. "But I think it might be cruel and wrong to inflict my post-fight foot odor on Babs."

Helena smiled weakly around the water bottle, and after a careful sip, bit the bullet. "You... know about that?" she asked, making a vague hand gesture in Barbara's general direction.

"I had _no idea_ ," said Dinah soberly. "About _any_ of it. I didn't even know... I always thought she'd gotten out of the city during No Man's Land. I mean, she said she was still around, but... I didn't really believe her. No power, no phones, no heat, how could she have kept operating like that...?"

"Where were you?" Helena asked, but it wasn't the bitter accusation Dinah had heard from other survivors, just a simple question.

"She had me out on assignment. I was busting Rheelasian kidnappers when the quake hit, and then she bounced me off to Europe to recover some Thanagarian tech.... By the time I got back stateside, they'd closed the city. So she sent me on _vacation_." Dinah pushed a hand back through her hair. "I can't believe it. I even asked her if she could get me into Gotham. She said she could, but she wouldn't. 'It's under control'," she said, aping Babs' most authoritative tone and earning another weak smile for her effort. "She did, however, offer to find anyone I was worried about. And she got someone to take care of my apartment for me."

Helena laughed, wincing painfully. "That's so Barbara.... The rest of us were... pissing on walls and... fighting over cans... like Cro-Magnons, while she... went after alien artifacts... from her loft. And still had time to... take care of someone's _apartment_." She shook her head slowly, and picked one of the iron supplements up from the chair where Dinah had left them. She weighed it in her hand speculatively, rolled it slowly between her fingers. "I lied to you, you know."

"What?" Dinah stopped picking at her bootlaces and looked up in confusion.

"When you asked... why the costume change. What I said..." Helena gave a minute shake of her head, and looked away, staring out the window. "It wasn't crunches."

"... it was the scars," Dinah finished slowly. "You wanted her to see them."

"All of them. Nightwing. ... _Him_. But... her especially, once I knew who she was. Remind them... what they owed me." She looked back up at Dinah, hands balled into tight fists still stained with her own blood, light catching in the corners of her eyes. "What _she_ owed _me_. ... God, Dinah. How stupid was I?"

Dinah pulled at her boot laces, struggling helplessly for words. "Like she said. It was a long time ago."

They were both quiet then, for what seemed like forever, as Dinah awkwardly worked her foot free and clumsily wrapped it, images of Barbara in a broken tower and Helena in a bloody pool of snow whirling endlessly through her head. She thought that maybe Helena had fallen asleep, when the other woman startled her suddenly by saying, "She was okay, you know."

Dinah glanced over, momentarily lost.

"You're... sitting there, worrying about her. Even though it's... long over. But she was... I think she had it... better than most of us.... Had power, heat. I'd hear... even into that Christmas... when we'd been eating... dog food and rats for... months, about a Blue Boy woman, who traded... information for cans. ...Not that she... had it easy. No one did. But... she's Oracle."

Dinah sighed, staring out the window and imagining Babs, trapped by shattered streets and broken ramps, shuttering every window on two floors to hide the telltale glow of computer lights from power-thirsty gangs. "Still," she said. "I wish I'd known. 'It's under control.' The hell with that, I'd have swum the damn _river_."

"Even then?" Helena said, mild skepticism in her expression and the beginnings of drugged sleep in her voice. "I thought... you hadn't even met yet."

"Even then." Dinah shrugged. "I can't really explain it, but at the very beginning, we just... clicked. I guess it's kind of weird, having someone whose face you've never seen for a best friend, but... it's Babs. You know?"

Helena gazed up toward the cockpit, where Zinda was haranguing the woman in question about how often she was forced to take off under duress, and Barbara was ignoring her and efficiently bandaging her arm.

"I think..." Helena rolled her head back and closed her eyes, and just before sleep finally claimed her, admitted, "I think I'm beginning to, yes."

 

 

(Title from a quote by Doris D Haddock)  
  



End file.
